This Looks Like An Awesome Way To Lay Everything Out And See How It All Overlaps! I May Need To Try This

This looks like an awesome way to lay everything out and see how it all overlaps! I may need to try this

so I've like finished one of the presents (not typed it up yet) and the other is - I've got three weeks today to finish it by and I've got it started! I have done some! I just need to check some notes and work out a few things that I couldn't do at work because I didn't have the files

(I did) (I just didn't read down far enough)

so now I'm back home and rather than getting straight to playing DA:I like I have been for the past week I was gonna write but uh

yeah anyway I'm working out the dnd shenans timeline with post-it notes on the floor and there is one hell of a draught down here. Wild.

A late (or early) STS for you: I spy a mention of pirates in your intro post. Would any of them care to introduce themselves, or would you mind talking about some of your favorite elements of their story?

oooh ok yes piracy I can do let's go

(STS is a state of mind and I am making a nest there) (this is getting long and rambly and maybe disjointed I am so sorry but not really? pirates be upon ye)

Short answer; the Nightgale clan and their meteoric rise to ruling the archipelago within two generations of being created, the uh. the destruction of the islands and their rebirth as dragon riders then slow slide into nature-reserve-for-the-weird-and-magical. (specific shout out to Jay, daughter of dragons and giver of no fucks, creator of the whole thing by accident because she only ever wanted a ship of her own not... This)

Long answer;

So! Pirates! They originate in Leritheyar which is like. the most fleshed out of the Mist Worlds because it was my only story world for the longest time and then I got too attached to some of the characters (like the pirates) and then everything exploded

but that's not what we're here for!

So the pirates as a whole are The dominant culture of the archipelago that may or may not make up. a large amount of landmass in Leritheyar. I can't do distances well but it's fine it works

this means that I have a wholeass timeline/history of their rise to power, various pirate kings, shifts in families etc etc but the important stuff here;

each family has An Island that they originate on. That's Theirs. and at least one ship, maybe more depending on how big they are! how much power they have! There are absolutely other people that live on these islands but if they are not Pirate Family they do not get on the ships (exceptions being for like. fishers ig. the K'sean are not an exception they are rogue from Anther and the pirates would like them out of their islands thank you but they are small and fast and hard to track)

there is a vague sort of truce that means mostly they don't go in for Big battles but also there are so many skirmishes etc

by far and away my favourite pirates are the Nightgales bc Jay was one of The OG OCs and I will always love her

Jay is not pirate family. She is an orphan on the ruling clan's island, friends with their heir, but she's nothing. Her friend says that once she is queen she will change things, she will take Jay with her

Jay's not about to wait for that, she's got plans. Plans that involve stealing a small skiff and sailing north into the night

Promptly washes up on Riyan, the forgotten continent, where the NightGale lives with her offspring of weird little fucked up creatures. The NightGale adopts Jay because this child Amuses her and everything is fine and dandy until the Sanders pirates come looking for her (possibly at behest of the pirate heir actually. She isn't queen yet but it's been a solid few years and she's worried)

Jay and her not-quite-sister Erris go with them, shenanigans ensue, Jay takes control of the clan. That's her ship now, her pirates. No one's really gonna argue with the teen who bested their captain in single combat and has a dragon on her shoulder and also whatever-the-fuck Erris is at her side.

Her friend (now queen) is delighted by this turn of events and together they are An Unholy Menace. jury's out on whether or not they were A Thing. the queen's son certainly thinks so and has an honest-to-god grudge against Jay, because he thinks she's gunning for rule of the islands

Jay does not give a fuck about ruling the islands. She has a ship, she has a pygmy dragon, she has Erris. All is good with the world. She adopts some of the Sanders kids to be her heirs and they take her name.

She gets herself a mage! She has a treaty with the mages(? I think?), actually, which more or less makes her ships untouchable in the shipping lanes. Her grandson marries the heir to the pirate throne (the king is not impressed with this actually. He's hating life. He tries to kill her and his own mother. He does not succeed (his own daughter may kill him? maybe it's his mother. who can say!))

People say she's still out there. people say they've seen her ship late at night, out in the mist where the eldrii and the akaha play, because for all that the NightGale is the dragon of forgotten things, there are some things that just can't stay unknown.

[her great-grandson is king when the islands are lost and so are the ships but they transition to riding dragons during the war and that's what punts them sideways into another world, where they have... some number of years to set themselves up before their dragons also disappear but by that time they have swathes of land on a sky island that they turn into a sort of reserve for Mythics and Magics to come and heal and rest, and they become another powerhouse to be feared]

no idea what yore talking about but you seem pretty tortured by it. smashin that like button ♥️

Scratch that, I think I just needed to drink water. The tree was nice tho, 9/10 would recommend.

brb gonna go sit in a tree and look at the sky until the wind blows this sleepy fog from my mind.

Some small details for a character learning sword fighting for the first time:

- sore wrists

- blisters on hands

- every movement opens you up to be hit

- they will hit the tops of their arm and own sides with the sword while learning

- there is a primal sixth sense when you know you’re being toyed with

And, for your typically nonviolent characters.

You don’t aim for the swords. You aim for the person holding the sword.

It sounds so obvious but needs to be accepted. Actively. When holding a sword you have to understand you’re attacking another person. Even to block you have to aim your blocks at the other person or they won’t be strong enough to actually protect yourself.

Can’t figure out why this scene still isn’t working?

You’ve written and rewritten the same scene five times and convinced yourself to move on to fix it later but it’s still there, still broken, and you can’t put a finger on what the problem is.

You’re in the wrong POV (if applicable)

Your narrator isn’t the best choice here, maybe they’re overshadowing a more important character or their commentary on what’s happening isn’t compelling enough by nature of their relationship with the story.

Your refuse to kill your darlings

You’ve worked so damn hard trying to fit a square peg of this really cool idea in isolation into the round hole that your narrative became. No matter how hard you shove or how many angles you try, it’s not going to work. Delete it, or move it.

This scene occurs at the wrong time

Maybe it’s a revelation that hits too early or too late, either in the physical timeline or within a character’s arc. Maybe it messes up the pacing, leaving characters either rushing or waiting around for the next scene to hit because the placement of your story beats has left clumps and gaps of action.

This scene throws somebody OOC

It might be a darling that needs sacrifice. Maybe it’s the wrong character to have that monologue or to say that cool quip you thought of, or they’re weirdly passionate about a thing that shouldn’t matter to them/nonplussed about something that should be very important to them. It’s something X would never do but you wrote anyway for the sake of the plot.

—

Or some combination of these. My deleted scenes for ENNS’s sequel is officially longer than the existing manuscript purely due to trial and error with my plot.